Help with -2.76 co-ordinates in synscan

[jon1000]

Hi, I am new not only to the site but to astronomy, I purchased the Sky-Watcher 130p GoTo synscan scope today but I am having a problem putting in my co-ordinates in to the computer,

One of my co-ordinates is -2.76 but I can not work out how to input this into the synscan as I can not wok out how to do the - sign and when i put it in as 2.76 and press enter it jumps to the 76 again.

I hope I have made this explination easy to understand as I really need help with this, I have had a long day already, Drove to Wales this morning to buy it and spent the rest of the day setting it up and working out this problem.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[themos]

The minus means you are West of Greenwich, does it accept East or West?

and 2.76 is 2 and 45 minutes and 36 seconds so try those numbers instead.

[brucen]

The handset does not use decimal co-ordinates. You can get the right ones from google map and they should go in ok.

The format you enter should look something like this:

002 45’ W 12 34 ’N.

[jon1000]

The minus means you are West of Greenwich, does it accept East or West?

and 2.76 is 2 and 45 minutes and 36 seconds so try those numbers instead.

Thanks for your help with this, It accepts both east and west but will allow only for the 2 45 to be inputed with no room for the 36 seconds. so do I leave it at 2 45 or round it up to 2 36, I dont even know how important this is?

Thanks.

[themos]

2 and 46 will be fine. I round 45 to 46 as 36 seconds is more than half a minute.

[jon1000]

Thanks alot.

I have just posted another thread if you could help with that.

basially its asking what position the telescope should be in when I do the initial star alignment for the nights viewing.

I guess it would be horizontal and facing north? so so the scope knows where the tripod is and doesnt bump in to it?

I know I am asking a lot of questions, thats because the instructions are rubbish and there are some good experts on here and very helpful too.

thanks

[jon1000]

Also can I add that i was on the phone to the shop I bought the scope from for 20 minutes and they didnt have a clue about the -2.76 problem so thank you for solving this.

[mallorcasaint]

Are you sure you are putting the co-ordinates in the right way around? As has been said it should be in Degrees, Mins and Seconds not decimal and you should be putting the Longtitude in first I believe and you can ignore the seconds.

[Cornelius Varley]

Actually the manuals arn't that bad, there are worse ones. You need to read the manual carefully, preferably with the telescope infront of you and indoors, then read it again.

Peter

[jon1000]

sorted the problem.

thanks.

[mallorcasaint]

And the answer was? It helps others if you post the solution.

[Squagnut]

Which way the telescope is pointing depends on what sort of mount you have - it always helps to give details of this. If it's an alt-az mount (such as a SynScan AZ) then it doesn't matter, as the first thing you'll point it at is probably a planet (3-star alignment) or a bright star (2-star alignment). It must be level - this is important. If it's an equatorial mount then you need to polar-align it first (i.e. set it up so that with everything centred, it points at the celestial pole, more or less defined by Polaris).

[jon1000]

Sorry, the answer was that -2.76 is the same as 2.45 and 36 seconds west, so I input 2.45 west.

[themos]

to avoid confusion we use : to separate minutes and seconds so we would write 2:45:36 and 2.76